


i know i don't deserve this (the capacity to feel)

by astronomy



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: M/M, hopefully that doesn't come across too strongly, i cried for a thousand years over bucky, spoilers for The Winter Soldier
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-28
Updated: 2014-04-28
Packaged: 2018-01-21 03:51:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,950
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1536497
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/astronomy/pseuds/astronomy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He goes back daily, for a while. He stares at the exhibit and he scrutinises the differences between himself and the man on the screen. Just for a few days. Along and back again. He remembers laughing. He forgets what it was for.</p>
            </blockquote>





	i know i don't deserve this (the capacity to feel)

**Author's Note:**

> you do not want to know the utter state the winter soldier has put me in
> 
> then again it probably comes across here i'm so sorry
> 
> the title is from mineral's [_if i could_](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PcBBictLnEI)
> 
> EDIT: i edited this a lil on december 6th because i only just got over that crippling cringing you get when you reread your own work. and it turns out all my bucky feelings have been doing over the past year is hibernating, because all it took was the thought of bucky's fictional metal arm to make me want to spear hydra's neck with a serrated knife. but anyhow.  
> also if anybody is reading this i am thinking of writing a sequel or a chapter two one day, perhaps, when my procrastinating is not so advanced as it is now and every second i spend on the internet no longer induces a rush of pity for the image of my future self struggling with final exams. anyway.

“Bucky,” Rogers says, like he means it. He sounds like he does.

The Winter Soldier looks away for a long time.

——

Years pulled out of his head like splinters.

“I don’t,” he says, more to the double on the screen than to himself. “I don’t —” His cheekbones are shadowed in blue and purple. His metal hand is curled into a fist. In this exhibit, people expect to learn of a hero. He was a hero. _Your work has been a gift to mankind_. Not the same hero they made this for. Eternally now, Rogers looks at the man with his face as though he is his own personal hero. Again and again. It’s a new kind of pain. He stands at the back under the shadows and he watches Bucky Barnes smile until he finds his own fleshed hand pulling at the corners of his lips, smoothing over his teeth. He pulls until it aches. He tries to remember feeling like a hero. He tries to forget.

Hero, villain, hero, what's the difference? Every villain thinks he’s a hero. The thing is, though —

“ _The thing is_ ,” he said, and Steve’s eyes were wide, like a cornered cat’s, “ _you don’t have to_.”

This, he thinks, is his own shortcoming. Every villain thinks he’s a hero. The thing is, the Winter Soldier is his own villain. And he is nobody’s hero.

——

Rogers is looking for him, with Wilson. It’s a new kind of pain. 

The scars around his shoulder are a done deal. This is ongoing. This is not the frostbitten wind in the mountains and it’s not the dusty city taste in his mouth. He stands in the middle of the sidewalk and lets the people flow around him on both sides. He stares at the alien billboards until the flashing lights burn shapes along the inside of his eyelids. This is not the world he was born into. Neither is it the one he created. And that is —

Not his fight. _Not gonna fight you_. The shield whipped down into the river like a warning. And for a second he realised. Then he forgot what he realised. And then he forgot that he realised anything at all.

The present, he thinks, is not very certain. They’re pretty messy, these done deals.

——

The city is full of big lines. It is full of people ducking their heads under umbrellas and sidestepping gutters. The Winter Soldier holds his real arm out in front of him and lets the rain turn the hair there into thin dark slashes. He is full of aches. Not blunt, like a headache — deep, like skin in cold water. But it’s not remembering, and it will never be a feat of heroism.

——

He goes back daily, for a while. He stares at the exhibit and he scrutinises the differences between himself and the man on the screen. Just for a few days. Along and back again. He remembers laughing. He forgets what it was for.

——

He wakes up sometimes and he feels the hollowed-out slam of _that was me,_ and _that was Steve,_ and _that was me,_ and _that was me,_ and _that was me,_ and _that was me._ It goes away quickly. The present, he remembers, is not very certain.

He screams, more at the man who lived his past than at himself, and his vision seems to waver. He finds guns. They’re not his guns, but they’re enough. Fire licks through every building in the neighbourhood and sirens blare. People wail, collect themselves in blankets and bundles of valuables, but it’s like he doesn’t see anything. Fragments of glass smash down onto the alleys like a sheet of hail. They sting his skin. He remembers the wrong things. 

—— 

Sometimes he forgets where he is even. Those are the worst days for the Winter Soldier.

——

“ _Best friends since childhood, Bucky Barnes and Steven Rogers were inseparable, on both schoolyard and battlefield_.”

He listens to it twenty times. He listens to it more than that. Bucky Barnes looks happy. Eternally, Bucky Barnes is happy. 

_Who the hell_ , he thinks, _is Bucky Barnes?_  


The Winter Soldier scoffs, and he doesn’t go back.

——

He doesn't shave for another day. He thinks, somehow, if he shaves, they'll see through him. They'll call him _Bucky_ and offer him showers and soup and warm clothes. He thinks, _I will not go back_. He will set fire to the Smithsonian. He will shoot every civilian he sees in the exhibit, and around it. He will drive his knife into Bucky Barnes' laughing throat. He will start another war. He doesn't do any of this. He goes back.

——

Black Widow knocks on the apartment's door, but he already knew she was coming. Her hair is brown for now, looped down to her waist, and her eyebrows are penciled in severely.

“He won’t give up,” she says, and raises an eyebrow, but the effect is lost on her through thick scores of makeup. “He’ll spend _years_. He’ll keep looking.”

“Why are you telling me this.” There’s no energy behind it. It’s not a question. The Winter Soldier already knows.

She smirks, but there’s little energy in that too. “Sharon’ll be pretty pissed off if her boyfriend spends the rest of his life looking for a man who tried to kill him.” Her voice is slow. It’s the only way she pleas. “Keep it in mind, James.”  


_A man who tried to kill him_. Romanov knows it too. He doesn’t know how to tell her that he knows, he knows. This is not a war. His fingers tighten against the doorframe when she mentions a Sharon. Chips of wood push through his fingers. He doesn’t know why. He doesn’t know how to tell yet either, but he thinks her parting smile is sad.

——

_That was Steve,_ and _that was me_ , and _that was Steve_ , and _that was me,_ and _that was me,_ and _that was me._ There’s a different feeling behind it all this time. He is no longer the one looking through the crosshairs.

The Winter Soldier reads his file, and James Buchanan Barnes’. The pages are creased. He looks for similarities. The word _hero_ is found 27 times in James’. He stops looking for it in the Winter Soldier’s file after the second page. He doesn’t want to know.

_——_

He listens to music. Loud music, quiet music, new music, old music. Older music. This he remembers. He remembers dancing. He lies spread-legged on the floor and his mind shifts. He remembers the swell of the women’s hips and the warm wetness of their breath against his neck. He remembers something else. He remembers thin wrists and cool skin. He imagines smaller hips and skinny arms and knees that always bumped his shins and soft gelled hair that flopped the wrong way afterwards, or maybe it’s not his imagination. There was laughter. There was always breathless laughter. The thing is —  


“ _This isn’t payback, is it?_ ”

“ _Now, why would I do a thing like that?”_

Minutes later. Minutes later. Minutes and the future is not certain. “ _Bucky_ ,” Steve said, like he meant it. Bucky learned what it was to fall. Bucky learned what it was to fail. Hours, and that's not even his name. The guilt pounds, pounds, pounds, and the Winter Soldier smashes the laptop and the music with it out of the cracked window. Bucky stumbles to his knees with his head on the windowsill and he chokes on his sobs. Bucky holds his wrists together in his lap and he pretends to know what it was all for. 

The thing is, people only make heroes out of the dead.

——

The Winter Soldier looks away for a long time, but James Buchanan Barnes never did. He refused to. James has an exhibit at the Smithsonian. Eternally, Captain America looks at James Barnes like he is his own personal hero. It’s a new kind of done deal. Eternity is a long time.

The city is full of oil streaks and screeching tires. It tastes of smoke and steel. The Winter Soldier stands a few blocks away from where Rogers and Wilson are having lunch. It took a long time to get here. The Winter Soldier can’t remember how long. He bites down hard on his metal fist until his gums begin to bleed. He spits the blood down at the gutter only when he begins to tremble from the weight of holding up the arm. He doesn’t go any further.

—— 

The thing is — and this is the worst part, for the Winter Soldier — the thing is, Captain America is good. He is a superhero. He is good. There is an exhibit for him at the Smithsonian Museum. He is a hero. The Winter Soldier pretends not to know. He pretends not to know. 

He thinks, _I don’t deserve to feel_. He remembers he is _a man who tried to kill him_. He is not good. He isn’t anywhere near.

But his exhibit is right there, next to the Captain’s.

——

_“’Til the end of the line.”_

It’s the end of the line. It’s the end of the line.

—— 

He stares at his face in the mirror. Not a soldier, not their assassin, not from Russia, not from Brooklyn, not James Buchanan Barnes, not an enemy, not a hero, not an experiment, not Bucky. Hollow-eyed, shaking shoulders, cracked lips. _My face_ , he thinks, and it’s done. It’s a done deal.

——

It takes a while.

18 people die. He reads the obituaries. He learns more about them than the Winter Soldier would care to know. But he feels something. He feels something. He sees the smiling photographs and the black-and-white print and he realises. This is not a war. This is not the War. This was never his war.

He almost compares it to waking up again on the operating table, seeing the hazy light. But the thing is, it isn’t really. It’s brighter.

It takes a little bit longer after that. It’s been a long, long time.

—— 

“’ _Til the end of the line_.”

The thing is, Bucky never expected to reach the end of the fucking line. Not before Steve.

His hand is shaking when he rings the doorbell. The Winter Soldier clenches it tight enough with his metal palm for it to leave bruises. The darkness is thick and warm. It’s a comfort, and there’s something that leaves him then. A chill maybe, not forcefully enough for him to notice with his heart still beating through his throat. But eventually.

The door opens, and it’s warmer. The Winter Soldier looks at the floor, at Rogers’ socked feet. 

“Bucky,” Rogers says, like he means it. The hope in his voice is blistering. It’s heroic. It’s heroic.

“I think,” Bucky says, and he looks up. Steve’s eyes are soft and wide, like he’s seen the sun at night. Like he’s a saint. Like he’s seraphic. As though with this look alone, everything is forgiven. “I think,” he says again, and it hurts him. He grits his teeth. _I’m with you ’til the end of the line_. “I want to remember. With you.”

He can’t remember what it was for yet.

(“Eventually,” Steve says later, and then again:“Eventually.” He touches the Winter Soldier’s cheek, skipping along the dark patches of fatigue and his smeared, staining mask; once like it’s a prayer, twice, like it’s a blessing. He refuses to let himself flinch. He does it three times, as though the very act itself is a miracle. Four times when he can’t help himself. The briefest fluttering of fingertips. It’s like a vow. Someday Bucky can fill the Winter Soldier’s shell and it is enough. It’s enough. It’ll be enough.)


End file.
